What goes on behind closed doors at museums? How are decisions about exhibitions made and who, or what, really makes them? Why are certain objects and styles of display chosen whilst others are rejected, and what factors influence how museum exhibitions are produced and experienced?

This book answers these searching questions by giving a privileged look behind the scenes at the Science Museum in London. By tracking the history of a particular exhibition, Macdonald takes the reader into the world of the museum curator and shows in vivid detail how exhibitions are created and how public culture is produced. She reveals why exhibitions do not always reflect their makers original intentions and why visitors take home particular interpretations. Beyond this local context, however, the book also provides broad and far-reaching insights into how national and global political shifts influence the creation of public knowledge through exhibitions.

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We currently have a backlist of nearly 200 titles, including beloved authors like Pam Schiller, MaryAnn F. Kohl, and Jackie Silberg. We are proud to be growing our list year after year. In 2010, we will publish more than 15 new titles, and begin exciting partnerships with Between the Lions and Nemours. The face of Gryphon House has changed over the years, but we still strive to publish and distribute the highest-quality books for educators, parents, and caregivers Create craft-board trees railroad tracks and skyscrapers and watch children experience the joy of learning through blocks. Clear descriptions of what children learn by playing with blocks accompany the activities. Each activity considers the ability and interest level of the children and encourages developmental skills such as problem-solving math science language and social skills. Block Play is a must-have for every teacher.

How does a city and a nation deal with a legacy of perpetrating atrocity? How are contemporary identities negotiated and shaped in the face of concrete reminders of a past that most wish they did not have?

Difficult Heritage focuses on the case of Nuremberg a city whose name is indelibly linked with Nazism to explore these questions and their implications. Using an original in-depth research, using archival, interview and ethnographic sources, it provides not only fascinating new material and perspectives, but also more general original theorizing of the relationship between heritage, identity and material culture.

The book looks at how Nuremberg has dealt with its Nazi past post-1945. It focuses especially, but not exclusively, on the citys architectural heritage, in particular, the former Nazi party rally grounds, on which the Nuremburg rallies were staged. The book draws on original sources, such as city council debates and interviews, to chart a lively picture of debate, action and inaction in relation to this site and significant others, in Nuremberg and elsewhere. In doing so, Difficult Heritage seeks to highlight changes over time in the ways in which the Nazi past has been dealt with in Germany, and the underlying cultural assumptions, motivations and sources of friction involved.

Whilst referencing wider debates and giving examples of what was happening elsewhere in Germany and beyond, Difficult Heritage provides a rich in-depth account of this most fascinating of cases. It also engages in comparative reflection on developments underway elsewhere in order to contextualize what was happening in Nuremberg and to show similarities to and differences from the ways in which other difficult heritages have been dealt with elsewhere. By doing so, the author offers an informed perspective on ways of dealing with difficult heritage, today and in the future, discussing innovative museological, educational and artistic practice.

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We currently have a backlist of nearly 200 titles, including beloved authors like Pam Schiller, MaryAnn F. Kohl, and Jackie Silberg. We are proud to be growing our list year after year. In 2010, we will publish more than 15 new titles, and begin exciting partnerships with Between the Lions and Nemours. The face of Gryphon House has changed over the years, but we still strive to publish and distribute the highest-quality books for educators, parents, and caregivers Science and math concepts are embedded in the things children do every day. With this book children learn the how the why and the what happens next with these open-ended self-directed activities. Everyday Discoveries shows how easily and naturally children can learn science and math in preschool programs early primary classrooms child care centers and home care settings.

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As warriors, freedom fighters and victims, as mothers, wives and prostitutes, and as creators and members of peace movements, women are inevitably caught up in the net of war. Yet womens participation in warfare and peace campaigns has often been underestimated or ignored. Images of Women in Peace and War explores womens relationships to war, peace, and revolution, from the Amazons, Inka and Boadicea, to women soldiers in South Africa, Mau Mau freedom fighters and the protestors at Greenham Common. The contributors consider not only the reality of womens participation but also look at how their actions have been perceived and represented across cultures and through history. They examine how sexual imagery is constructed, how it is used to delineate womens relation to warfare and how these images have sometimes been subverted in order to challenge the status quo. The book raises important questions about whether women have a special prerogative to promote peace and considers whether the experience of motherhood leads to a distinctive womens position on war. The authors find that their analyses lead them to deal with arguments on the basic nature of the sexes and to reevaluate our concepts of peace, war, and gender.

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Memorylands is an original and fascinating investigation of the nature of heritage, memory and understandings of the past in Europe today. It looks at how Europe has become a memoryland littered with material reminders of the past, such as museums, heritage sites and memorials; and at how this memory phenomenon is related to the changing nature of identities especially European, national and cosmopolitan. In doing so, it provides new insights into how memory and the past are being performed and reconfigured in Europe and with what effects.

Drawing especially, though not exclusively, on cases, concepts and arguments from social and cultural anthropology, Memorylands argues for a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the cultural assumptions involved in relating to the past. It theorizes the various ways in which materializations of identity work and relates these to different forms of identification within Europe. The book also addresses questions of methodology, including discussion of historical, ethnographic, interdisciplinary and innovative methods. Through a wide-range of case-studies from across Europe, Sharon Macdonald argues that Europe is home to a much greater range of ways of making the past present than is usually realized and a greater range of forms of historical consciousness. At the same time, however, she seeks to highlight what she calls the European memory complex a repertoire of prevalent patterns in forms of recollection and past presencing.

The examples in Memorylands are drawn from both the margins and metropolitan centres, from the relatively small-scale and local, the national and the avant-garde. The book looks at pasts that are potentially identity-disrupting or difficult as well as those that affirm identities or offer possibilities for transcending national identities or articulating more cosmopolitan futures. Topics covered include authenticity, temporalities, embodiment, commodification, nostalgia and Ostalgie, the musealization of everyday and folk-life, Holocaust commemoration and tourism, narratives of war, the heritage of Islam, transnationalism, and the future of the past.

Memorylands is engagingly written and accessible to general readers as well as offering a new synthesis for advanced researchers in memory and heritage studies. It is essential reading for those interested in identities, memory, material culture, Europe, tourism and heritage.

Quilts; the very word calls up warm thoughts--of mothers and grandmothers, of love, comfort, and security, of learning to sew, favourite pattersn, bright colours, and recollections of thrift during harder times. Old Nova Scotia quilts is a remarkable book featuring fifty of the best quilts in the Nova Scotia Museum collection.

Reimagining Culture An analysis of responses to the "Gaelic renaissance" in a Scottish Hebridean community, this text includes description of everyday conceptions of belonging as well as interpretations of cultural policy such as crofting, local history, religion and community development. Full description

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We currently have a backlist of nearly 200 titles, including beloved authors like Pam Schiller, MaryAnn F. Kohl, and Jackie Silberg. We are proud to be growing our list year after year. In 2010, we will publish more than 15 new titles, and begin exciting partnerships with Between the Lions and Nemours. The face of Gryphon House has changed over the years, but we still strive to publish and distribute the highest-quality books for educators, parents, and caregivers Enrich classroom learning centers with lively fun activities designed to stimulate exciting learning for young children. This critical resource includes over 200 activities for the following centers: Manipulatives Construction Woodworking Blocks Music Gross Motor Library Science Dramatic Play Art and Sand and Water.